


These Are Your First Steps

by sartiebodyshots



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 09:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7166438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sartiebodyshots/pseuds/sartiebodyshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short missing scene of an Aeducan's first steps on the surface after her exile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Are Your First Steps

Sereda trails towards the back of the Grey Warden entourage.  She’s glad that Duncan told the other Wardens that her reasons for leaving Orzammar were her own.  He hadn’t even pulled her aside to ask her quietly about her reasons for leaving.  Given her strong assurance that Orzammar needs her the night before, he must know that something happened.  

The humans have quickly forgotten her, which is fine by her.  Her sudden anonymity is startling, but freeing.  No more people fainting because she talked to them.  

“We’re near the surface, aren’t we?” Sereda asks softly, trying to keep the waver out of her voice.

“Yes.  Have you been out this way before?” one of the nameless Wardens asks.  

“No,” Sereda says.  “Dwarves are attuned to the Stone.  We don’t get lost underground.  I can feel the changes in the Stone as we get closer to the surface.”

“Weird,” he says.

The way he’s looking at her makes her skin crawl, like she’s an attraction or an oddity.  She resolves to stay quiet around the humans from here on in.  

“No weirder than your excessive height,” Sereda snaps back as she strides past him.

While he doesn’t say anything, Duncan does give her a small smile when she catches up with him.  She doesn’t quite smile back.  

There’s no way that Sereda is trusting any of them.  She had trusted Trian and Bhelen, and look where that had got her.  She can still feel Trian’s blood under her fingernails and feel the hot, burning shame as she was paraded before everyone whose respect she had earned, in chains as a kinslayer.  Every time she blinks, she sees Bhelen leaning against the column in the crossroads, so incredibly smug.  It makes her stomach churn.

There had been no honor in any of it.

Her heart starts to beat faster as they grow nearer to the surface.  This is really happening.  She’s going to the  _ surface _ .  The thought is absolutely revolting; death in the Deep Roads might be preferable.  Dwarves belong underground, and she remembers all those old stories about people falling into the sky.  There’s no way she’s asking any of these people about that.

There’s a bright light ahead, and Sereda realizes that must be the surface.  She can also feel the air moving against her skin.  None of this is right, and every bit of her wants to retreat.

But, even if she’s been exiled and stripped of her House, her spirit is the spirit of an Aeducan.  She was raised to be fearless and to be capable.  Most of all, she was raised to kill darkspawn.  If that’s what the Grey Wardens are about, then that’s something she can support, at least.  She can die bravely, killing the great enemy of her people.

Sereda tries and fails to stifle her gasp when she steps onto the surface for the first time.  Somehow it snuck up on her, lost in her grief as she is.  One minute she’s below ground, safe, and the next minute, there’s a blue mass above her and air stirring against her skin.

Loss.  That’s her immediate impression of the surface.  The Stone has always been a solid presence around her, and suddenly, it’s gone.  It feels so wrong.  How do people live like this, with nothing above them?  This is sheer lunacy.

She can’t bring herself to look up into the sky properly, to look at the- what was the word again?- sun.  It’s too much, and she wants to learn to deal with this without the humans watching her.  What’s left of her pride refuses to let her be their source of amusement like that.  

“It feels good to be out of that dungeon,” the nameless Warden says.

“It was stifling,” his companion agrees as they both move hurriedly forwards.

Sereda realizes that her breath is coming in shallow gasps and she tries to keep it under control.  It feels like there’s not nearly enough air in her lungs, as if the air up here is wrong.  Maybe that’s all in her head, but it’s difficult for her to tell over her own panic.

“Sereda,” Duncan’s voice is low.  “Are you alright?”

She looks up into his concerned eyes, but is quickly overwhelmed by the bright blue background.  Back in Orzammar, she had used makeup to color her lips blue.  Blue was such a rare color and it had been delightful to apply it every day.  The color was strikingly beautiful.  But now, looking up at Duncan’s face with piercing blue surrounding it, blue seems like a sharp knife of a color, slicing into her painfully.  

“Yes, thank you,” Sereda says reflexively as she looks away.  

“If you need anything, just mention it,” Duncan says.  

“Of course,” Sereda says.  “Thank you.”

Sereda forces herself to keep walking forward, further and further from Orzammar.  This is her new world, and she might as well get used to it.  

Ancestors, what has she gotten herself into? 


End file.
